


Manhood

by Nny



Category: due South
Genre: First Lines Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I don’t wanna die in the feminine hygiene aisle, Fraser," he tells him solemnly.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manhood

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to foreverdirt and soupytwist, for feedback and helpful comments. First line is from ignazwisdom's _Certain Drawbacks_.

[It's Monday and he's getting shot at.](http://www.geocities.com/holdenesque/certain.html)

Which, actually, is kind of a big deal these days. Not like it used to be, in Chicago, where every other scumbag and his grandmother had an arsenal in the basement; turns out Canada’s got the same sort of gun laws as America but they don’t so much feel the need to use ‘em. Difference is, in Canada they got bears they can wrestle if they need to prove the size of their dicks. Not that all of them _do_ \- Fraser wouldn’t go wrestling bears unless the bear was being particularly impolite, or something, but that’s not really a problem ‘cos Ray can personally vouch for the size of his dick. (He wouldn’t, though. Not where anyone could hear.)

…Okay, so it’s possible he’s bleeding a little more than he thought he was. 

Difference the second: Ray’s got no gun up here, which is something he forgets. So when some farthandle starts waving a gun around in the general store it kinda slips his mind that he’s got nothing to back him up except balls which, okay, he has plenty to spare, but they’re kind of useless in a fire fight. 

“Easy, guy, easy,” he says, holding out his hand which hurts like _fuck_ but he needs the hand on his good side to clamp down on the hole, try to slow the blood running through his fingers down a little. “Nobody needs to get hurt here, okay?”

The kid - because it’s always kids, because kids are invincible and invulnerable and fucking stupid, and most people only ever grow out of two of the three - is staring at him with pretty much all the colour leached out of his face. That’s good. That he can work with. 

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” he says, and that’s even better, that shake in his voice there. 

“Well that’s good ‘cos you wasted five bullets so far and that gun only holds a standard nine rounds, so you gotta be pretty sure of your aim if you’re wanting to.”

The kid looks suspiciously at his gun and Ray thinks - hey, if I were ten years younger… and fucking _suicidal_ … 

“Why’d you tell me that? Why’re you helping?”

“Hey, you gotta admire a man who knows what he wants. We should all get what we want, right?” Ray leans back against the shelving, partly to look non-threatening and partly because his head is starting to spin, just a little. “Now me, I’m a simple man. I figure the sooner we get this done the sooner we can get out of here, and what I want right now is not to die in the feminine hygiene aisle ‘cos you got to admit that’s just gonna be embarrassing.”

“I don’t want - I don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t?” Ray snorts a little, tilting his head back and lowering his eyelids so maybe the way the floor’s swaying won’t make him quite so seasick. “You don’t? That’s - that’s a good one, kid. You see anyone else waving a gun in here?”

Except he does, out the corner of his eye, a flash of red, and he takes his hand off the mess on his side long enough that he can brush his thumb down the edge of his nose, and that’s gonna leave a mark. 

Things start strobing a little then. Fraser beans the kid with a can - which sets Ray off giggling and hunched around himself and forcing out a groan with every other breath - and then he’s staring up at the ceiling, towers of pink products around him like he died and went to Barbie and Fraser’s uniform clashes horribly which just goes to prove you can’t believe everything you hear about gay men. (‘cos Fraser’s never made a big thing of hiding it, like him.)

It’s his face Ray’s focused on, though, the way he looks kinda angry and scared and determined, easier to read than he ever was in the city, and Ray blinks up at him, reassured just ‘cos he’s there, even though he’s actually hurting like fuck and starting to grey out a little, around the edges. 

“I don’t wanna die in the feminine hygiene aisle, Fraser,” he tells him solemnly. 

“You are not going to die,” Fraser tells him, which is way more reassuring than if he’d finished the sentence, so go Fraser, yay Fraser, and from the way his face looks it’s possible he’s saying this out loud but hey, the point stands, and it’s not all he says. Stuff he wouldn’t normally say where anyone can hear him, most days not even Fraser unless he can pretend that the guy’s asleep or not paying attention, but he says it now ‘cos if he doesn’t want to die in the fucking general store, he wants to die in the closet even less. 

Fraser just shakes his head, squeezes his hand hard enough that he has to suck in air, gives love two syllables, but he figures Fraser knows what he means. 

When he wakes up again it’s glaring white everywhere - which he’s always thought is a choice on the part of doctors to fuck with people’s heads a little, make ’em wonder for a second if they actually bought it - and Fraser’s sacked out on the chair by his bed, fingers still clamped tightly around Ray’s left wrist. 

He doesn’t move for a bit ‘cos everything fucking hurts, even his _hair_ , which Fraser - when he wakes up - says is frankly impossible; Ray reminds him that he doesn’t actually know everything, and just ‘cos Fraser’s hair never does anything he doesn’t want it to doesn’t mean everyone’s so lucky. Fraser just nods with a little smile on his face like even the bitching doesn’t make him regret saving Ray’s life, the freak. 

He did, though. Save Ray’s life. And if dying in a feminine hygiene aisle is the most embarrassing thing Ray can think of then having a Mountie staunch the bleeding with a fucking Kotex is still pretty high up there, right near the top. 

“I swear, Fraser,” he says, in front of god and of everyone, “if I didn’t love you so fucking much…”


End file.
